Quality assessment of the Ozone_cci Climate Research Data Package (release 2017) – Part 2: Ground-based validation of nadir ozone profile data products

Abstract

Abstract. Atmospheric ozone plays a key role in air quality and the radiation budget of the Earth, both directly and through its chemical influence on other trace gases. Assessments of the atmospheric ozone distribution and associated climate change therefore demand accurate vertically resolved ozone observations with both stratospheric and tropospheric sensitivity, on both global and regional scales, and both in the long term and at shorter timescales. Such observations have been acquired by two series of European nadir-viewing ozone profilers, namely the scattered-light UV–visible spectrometers of the GOME family, launched regularly since 1995 (GOME, SCIAMACHY, OMI, GOME-2A/B, TROPOMI, and the upcoming Sentinel-5 series), and the thermal infrared emission sounders of the IASI type, launched regularly since 2006 (IASI on Metop platforms and the upcoming IASI-NG on Metop-SG). In particular, several Level-2 retrieved, Level-3 monthly gridded, and Level-4 assimilated nadir ozone profile data products have been improved and harmonized in the context of the ozone project of the European Space Agency's Climate Change Initiative (ESA Ozone_cci). To verify their fitness for purpose, these ozone datasets must undergo a comprehensive quality assessment (QA), including (a) detailed identification of their geographical, vertical, and temporal domains of validity; (b) quantification of their potential bias, noise, and drift and their dependences on major influence quantities; and (c) assessment of the mutual consistency of data from different sounders. For this purpose we have applied to the Ozone_cci Climate Research Data Package (CRDP) released in 2017 the versatile QA and validation system Multi-TASTE, which has been developed in the context of several heritage projects (ESA's Multi-TASTE, EUMETSAT's O3M-SAF, and the European Commission's FP6 GEOmon and FP7 QA4ECV). This work, as the second in a series of four Ozone_cci validation papers, reports for the first time on data content studies, information content studies and ground-based validation for both the GOME- and IASI-type climate data records combined. The ground-based reference measurements have been provided by the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC), NASA's Southern Hemisphere Additional Ozonesonde programme (SHADOZ), and other ozonesonde and lidar stations contributing to the World Meteorological Organisation's Global Atmosphere Watch (WMO GAW). The nadir ozone profile CRDP quality assessment reveals that all nadir ozone profile products under study fulfil the GCOS user requirements in terms of observation frequency and horizontal and vertical resolution. Yet all L2 observations also show sensitivity outliers in the UTLS and are strongly correlated vertically due to substantial averaging kernel fluctuations that extend far beyond the kernel's 15 km FWHM. The CRDP typically does not comply with the GCOS user requirements in terms of total uncertainty and decadal drift, except for the UV–visible L4 dataset. The drift values of the L2 GOME and OMI, the L3 IASI, and the L4 assimilated products are found to be overall insignificant, however, and applying appropriate altitude-dependent bias and drift corrections make the data fit for climate and atmospheric composition monitoring and modelling purposes. Dependence of the Ozone_cci data quality on major influence quantities – resulting in data screening suggestions to users – and perspectives for the Copernicus Sentinel missions are additionally discussed.

Validation of the IASI FORLI/EUMETSAT ozone products using satellite (GOME-2), ground-based (Brewer–Dobson, SAOZ, FTIR) and ozonesonde measurements

“…The GB stations considered in this paper (see Table A1 in Boynard et al, 2016 for a com-plete list of the stations) have been extensively used in a series of validation papers regarding satellite TOC measurements (e.g., Weber et al, 2005;Balis et al, 2007a, b;Koukouli et al, 2012Koukouli et al, , 2015Boynard et al, 2016). For the validation of IASI-A and IASI-B TOCs, only direct sun observations are used as GB UV reference data as they are the most reliable for both the Dobson and the Brewer spectrophotometers, the latter offering an accuracy of about 1 % at moderate solar zenith angles (e.g., Kerr, 2002). TOC measurements are also obtained from SAOZ zenith sky UV-vis spectrometers (Pommereau and Goutail, 1988), which are part of the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC, http://www.ndacc.…”

Analysis of ozone vertical profile day-to-day variability in the lower troposphere during the Paris-2022 ACROSS campaign

“…aeris-data.fr/O3/; Aeris, 2024). The FORLI-O 3 products (profiles and columns) have undergone a series of validation using available ground-based, aircraft, ozonesonde and other satellite observations over local areas and/or short time periods (Antón et al, 2011;Dufour et al, 2010;Pommier et al, 2012) and more recently at global scale over a 10-years period (Boynard et al, 2016(Boynard et al, , 2018Keppens et al, 2018). IASI data and ozonesonde measurements are in agreement in the troposphere at mid-latitudes (differences of 11-13%) with a significant vertical sensitivity in the troposphere (Boynard et al, 2018).…”

Is the recovery of stratospheric O<sub>3</sub> speeding up in the Southern Hemisphere? An evaluation from the first IASI decadal record (2008–2017)

“…The largest increase is observed in polar O 3 with amplitudes reaching ∼ 2.0 DU yr −1 . The mid-latitudes also show significant O 3 enhancement, which can be attributed to air mass mixing after the disruption of the polar vortex (Knudsen and Grooss, 2000;Fioletov and Shepherd, 2005;Dhomse et al, 2006;Nair et al, 2015).…”